Pictured: Basically what every day looks like in the average newsroom too, so don't stand there acting all bad-ass.
GateHouse — Because a 6-year-old lives in it, our house has pretty strict rules about TV, but because I’m a reasonable parent — and by that I mean “inconsistent whenever it’s convenient for me” — I tend to waive those rules under appropriate circumstances, such as the airing of a “Deadliest Catch” marathon on the Discovery Channel.
I do this because I am father to possibly the developed world’s liveliest 6-year-old “Deadliest Catch” fan. If there was a Time Bandit Lego playset, or perhaps a Capt. Phil Harris action figure (with detachable cigarette), Christmas 2009 would have featured a whole lot more crabs in it, instead of just the three million trains. (Absolutely true story: My son recently wondered aloud if the Phil Harris from “Deadliest Catch” is the same Phil Harris who voices Baloo in “The Jungle Book.” I’m investigating whether or not you can get scholarships through IMDB.)
If you aren’t familiar, “Deadliest Catch” returns for its sixth season April 13 on the Discovery Channel, a cable outlet which used to be devoted strictly to relentless animal fornication but now is TV’s premier outlet for showing people whose jobs involve an elevated amount of open sewage, on-the-job violence or fluids of displeasing origins. (In addition to “Catch,” Discovery airs the fantastic “Dirty Jobs,” which, the last time I watched, featured two people manipulating the digestive system of a snake until it chorked up three-quarters of a moderately digested fish onto a table; the only part missing, delightfully, was the head. On the plus side it’s not like I was enjoying a fish sandwich at the time or anything OH WAIT YES I WAS, BUT GO AHEAD GUYS, KEEP IT UP, WITH THE CLOSE-UP SNAKE FISHVOMIT).
Anyway, “Deadliest Catch” is a reality show not in the vacant-eyed gossip-pinups-dance-for-money vein, but one that tracks the bracingly intense and oft-bleeped exploits of Alaskan crab fisherman, a group of snow-covered seapeople who are defined by insane hours, an inhuman willingness to work through shattering conditions and many pretty immediate dental needs. If you are, say, someone whose days are given over to remaining seated in front of a computer, it is near-perfect “Into The Wild”-type escapism, albeit escapism that makes you feel like about a third of an actual man, especially if you hypothetically have a thing about spiders or whatever.
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I blame my interest in the show on my brother and sister-in-law and their large and giant television, which is something like 63 feet wide, has plasma all up in it and can see back to just a few million years after the Big Bang. A few years ago I visited them and their TV, and the first thing they did was dial it directly to a crackling Super HD Giant-Screen Look At The Crabs Jumping At Your Face broadcast of “Deadliest Catch,” which caused parts of my brain to leak from my ears and resulted in a great deal of cleanup on the part of my brother, who hates it when brains get all over his couch (totally OCD, but whatever).
Needless to say, within a few months, I had a new TV and a flotilla of HD “Deadliest Catch” shows on the DVR machine. And I quickly found myself sharing it with my son, because far from being mere entertainment, “Deadliest Catch” teaches many valuable life lessons:
- Smoking is awesome.
- If your job does not involve being soaked to the bone with ice-cold seawater during a 36-hour shift unloading massive clacking crabs from giant metal traps on a boat pitching around in violent Arctic seas, you should probably quit whining about how bad your job is.
- When you have spent several hours watching Alaskan fisherman navigate gale-force winds, freak storms and the occasional seal attack, however boring you think you are, you suddenly realize you’re like 10 times more boring than that. (Note to animal lobbyists: I know, I’m kidding about the seal attack. Seals are, of course, cute and friendly and delicious.)
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But we’re going to run into problems with the show later this year, because one of the most entertaining “Deadliest Catch” captains, the afore-mentioned Phil Harris, died in February. My son of course does not know this yet, but he suspects something is up, because every time the commercial comes on with the dramatic, starkly lit close-ups of the captains and crew, that Eddie Vedder ukulele song and the shots of a broken-looking Capt. Phil, Dad gets suddenly and obviously choked up for no apparent reason whatsoever (for his benefit I make up something about the Cubs, which is entirely logical). But I have a foolproof plan for how to handle this: When that part of the season rolls around, I will quietly, yet firmly, switch back over to “The Jungle Book.”
I'm a a writer for such outlets as Men's Health, South Magazine, Nickelodeon's 
April 12th, 2010 at 10:01 am
Excellent, Jeff!
This show satisfies that urge somewhere in the back of my mind to go up to Alaska and be on a crab boat for a season. I don’t have to do that when I watch this show. I can tell that this would really suck just by watching it!
April 12th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
I’ve thought about doing it myself, were it not for the many hundreds of people who would be immediately killed
April 13th, 2010 at 12:58 am
Yes. Stick to what you are mediocre at. That’s my creed!
April 12th, 2010 at 11:30 am
I laughed out loud when I read “I visited them and their TV”
I have not seen this show but you sure crack me up.
April 12th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I mostly visited the TV. They’re lovely people, but that screen is a monster
April 12th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
good luck with that transition. hmm…deadliest catch to jungle book. seems fool proof to me.
and your son and i have something in common. at the tender age of 6, in my sleep i recounted that charlton heston was in fact moses. i’m still waiting for my imdb scholarship or at least some useless movie/pop culture internship to happen on jeoprady.
April 12th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
WAIT CHARLTON HESTON IS WHO?
April 12th, 2010 at 6:42 pm
joking? sarcasm sucks on line, doesn’t it?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/
April 12th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Damn, it really does. Rest assured I am familiar with Heston’s godly glory; in fact, after a multitude of beers, I do a fairly fantastic impression, if I do say so myself
April 12th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Ha ha! But, did I miss something? What besides getting tweaked in the nose by an angry crab is deadly about the “catch?” Should the show be called “Deadliest Job?”
April 12th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
This is an excellent point; very few fishermen have ever been killed by delicious crab, have they?
April 12th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Yeah. Maybe if this is the sort of thing they were going after:
April 13th, 2010 at 9:20 am
Thanks! I love nature documentaries
April 13th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Jeff,
It is funny you are talking about Deadliest Catch. At the end of last season when the Nuka Island rolled over, my brother in law was on that boat and ended up with a gash on his head because he was tossed across the wheel house. On the boat that has Doug Dawson on it I know him as well. We went to school together from the time we were in the 5th grade until we graduated from high school. Being on that show has helped Doug curb his swearing. There were bets going on how much they would have to bleep him out. I enjoy watching this show because I sometimes see people I know. Doug and my brother in law have been fishermen their whole lives. We had to change the date of our high school graduation because half the class was going out fishing. I figure my brother in law Rob has been a fisherman for about 30 years and he is only 40. He started going out with his dad when he was around 10 and getting paid for it. Usually only in the summer.
April 13th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Hi Sara, thanks for the note. Are you in Alaska?
April 13th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
“…Dad gets suddenly and obviously choked up for no apparent reason whatsoever (for his benefit I make up something about the Cubs, which is entirely logical).”
Bwah haha…..entirely logical, indeed. Deadliest Catch could actually be about the Cubs’ miscues now and then…..
I truly don’t know how you come up with the things you write about, but I sure do enjoy reading where your mind goes!
April 13th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Ha! Or, more accurately, “Deadliest Almost-Catch”
April 30th, 2010 at 12:12 am
shoot fun stuff man.
July 12th, 2010 at 10:36 am
[...] “Deadliest Catch” confirms: I’m about 30% of an actual man [...]